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Ice Diaries (Booktrack Edition)

An Antarctic Memoir

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Ice Diaries (Booktrack Edition)

Written by: Jean McNeil
Narrated by: Bridget Wareham
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About this listen

Ice Diaries: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!*

A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent - Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely reserved for scientists, and it is the only piece of earth that is nobody’s country. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent.

In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice. In entering this world, McNeil unexpectedly finds herself confronting her own upbringing in the Maritimes, the lifelong effects of growing up in a cold place, and how the climates of childhood frame our emotional thermodynamics for life. Ice Diaries is a haunting story of the relationship between beauty and terror, loss and abandonment, transformation and triumph.

*Booktrack is an immersive listening experience that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music and sound effects. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.

©2016 Jean McNeil (P)2018 ECW Press
Art & Literature Environment Travel & Tourism Travel Writing & Commentary Polar Region
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What the critics say

Ice Diaries is stunningly written and should be on the shelf of anyone fascinated by the globe’s final geographic and psychic frontier.” (The New York Times)

“It's a discussion of the Antarctic as a physical landscape - its impact on the imagination - and an exploration of one person's inner world.” (Chicago Tribune)

“McNeil’s first-person narrative of her experience wholly absorbs.... Most of Ice Diaries, however, reads like a novel. It’s a paradox: the best novels emulate real life and the best true stories emulate fiction.” (Maclean’s)

What listeners say about Ice Diaries (Booktrack Edition)

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Probably a good book BUT . . .

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It is well written and has lyrical and evocative descriptions off her journey. Unfortunately I was looking for Antarctica, and the part I finished is about 70% reminiscence about her upbringing and her interactions with one other voyager, which was not what I was looking for in a book right now.
The tone is very somber, and combined with a monotone reading found it depressing. The new age musical background didn’t help either. Might be better read on paper I think.

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